Related papers: A polynomial upper bound on Reidemeister moves for…

We prove that any diagram of the unknot with c crossings may be reduced to the trivial diagram using at most (236 c)^{11} Reidemeister moves. Moreover, every diagram in this sequence has at most (7 c)^2 crossings. We also prove a similar…

We provide an explicit upper bound on the number of Reidemeister moves required to pass between two diagrams of the same link. This leads to a conceptually simple solution to the equivalence problem for links.

We prove that deciding if a diagram of the unknot can be untangled using at most $k$ Riedemeister moves (where $k$ is part of the input) is NP-hard. We also prove that several natural questions regarding links in the $3$-sphere are NP-hard,…

We provide an upper bound on the number of ordered Reidemeister moves required to pass between two diagrams of the same link. This bound is in terms of the number of unordered Reidemeister moves required.

Every link in the 3-sphere has a projection to the plane where the only singularities are pairwise transverse triple points. The associated diagram, with height information at each triple point, is a triple-crossing diagram of the link. We…

In this study of the Reidemeister moves within the classical knot theory, we focus on hard diagrams of knots and links, categorizing them as either rigid or shaky based on their adaptability to certain moves. We establish that every link…

The Reidemeister theorem states that any link in $3$-space can be encoded by a diagram (a suitably decorated projection) on a plane, and provides a finite set of combinatorial moves relating two diagrams of the same link up to isotopy. In…

We prove that certain problems naturally arising in knot theory are NP--hard or NP--complete. These are the problems of obtaining one diagram from another one of a link in a bounded number of Reidemeister moves, determining whether a link…

We introduce an up-down coloring of a virtual-link diagram. The colorabilities give a lower bound of the minimum number of Reidemeister moves of type II which are needed between two 2-component virtual-link diagrams. By using the notion of…

There is a positive constant $c_1$ such that for any diagram $D$ representing the unknot, there is a sequence of at most $2^{c_1 n}$ Reidemeister moves that will convert it to a trivial knot diagram, $n$ is the number of crossings in $D$. A…

Deformations of knots and links in ambient space can be studied combinatorially on their diagrams via local modifications called Reidemeister moves. While it is well-known that, in order to move between equivalent diagrams with Reidemeister…

We show that any two diagrams of the same knot or link are connected by a sequence of Reidemeister moves which are sorted by type.

We give an upper bound on the z-degree of the Kauffman polynomial of a link, using bridges of length greater than one which are separated in some tangle decomposition of a link diagram. We construct some examples by wiring together rational…

We present a sequence of diagrams of the unknot for which the minimum number of Reidemeister moves required to pass to the trivial diagram is quadratic with respect to the number of crossings. These bounds apply both in $S^2$ and in $\R^2$.

We define a set of restricted Reidemeister moves and show that if $K$ is obtained from $K_0\,\#\,K_1$ using those moves, then the crossing number of $K$ is at least $c(K_0)+c(K_1)$. We also explore topological interpretations of this…

Stoimenow and Kidwell asked the following question: Let $K$ be a non-trivial knot, and let $W(K)$ be a Whitehead double of $K$. Let $F(a,z)$ be the Kauffman polynomial and $P(v,z)$ the skein polynomial. Is then always $\max\deg_z P_{W(K)} -…

We present three "hard" diagrams of the unknot. They require (at least) three extra crossings before they can be simplified to the trivial unknot diagram via Reidemeister moves in $\mathbb{S}^2$. Both examples are constructed by applying…

We show that every knot type admits a pair of diagrams that cannot be made identical without using Reidemeister Omega_2-moves. We also show that our proof is compatible with known results for the other move types, in the sense that every…

We introduce the non-self OU sequence and the OU number for link diagrams. Using these, we give a lower bound for the number of necessary Reidemeister moves of type III between two diagrams of the same link.

The potential function of the optimistic limit of the colored Jones polynomial and the construction of the solution of the hyperbolicity equations were defined in the authors' previous articles. In this article, we define the Reidemeister…